


All My Memories

by PontiusHermes



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Merlin, Hurt/Comfort, Kingsman Spoilers, Memories, Men Crying, Merlin deserves better, Pain, Poor Merlin, Post-Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 21:45:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12616232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PontiusHermes/pseuds/PontiusHermes
Summary: Spoilers. Merlin is recovering after the land mine incident. Sometimes memories are cruel.





	All My Memories

The phantom pain was incessant, a gnawing I-can-feel-my-legs-under-the-sheets-but-can't restlessness that kept him up through the more friendless hours of the night, and drifting lightly on a tossing, seething sleep-sea by day. The world, even time, was a drugged-numb monotone, as bland as hospital walls. He sobbed when the pain was bad, but didn't cry.

He had visitors, Eggsy and Harry prominent among them, but their words blurred together in his sleep-starved brain, whether news or comfort, becoming a disturbing muttering. He listened politely, drifting just under the surface of the words, but the emptiness in his eyes told them he's rather be alone, trying to sink into the elusive depths of sleep.

Memories taunted, sleeping or waking. Memories of jumping, dodging, running. Walking, even. Simple feats he might never accomplish again. He watched them with the vague, fascinated boredom with which one might watch old family footage. They drifted through his dreams and surfaced during sleepless nights, a pageant of normalcy.

The un-memories were worse, the faded imprints of what might have been. These were newer and sharper and cut much more deeply. _Hiking through the Scottish highlands, empty space and misting breath. Dancing with Harry Hart, feeling the man's warmth radiating through his suit…_ Pain broke through the numbness, raw and stinging. _Dancing… Harry…_ Different to the other pain, it called for tears as well as sobs. They rushed over him, streaming down his face, while he clung brokenly to the bedsheet and drowned.

Harry may have been surprised, when he arrived for visiting hour, at the sudden lack of stoicism. He sat patiently on the chair beside the bed, and rested a hand on top of Merlin's where it blindly clenched the sheet, stroking gently with his thumb. Neither said anything while Merlin surfaced slowly from his despair, but when Merlin's sobs had turned to hitches Harry brought the other man's hand to his lips and kissed it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :)
> 
> Pontius


End file.
